County Durham Has Highest Percentage of Uninsured Drivers

When you say uninsured drivers, many of us would imagine it is largely an urban problem, but the reality is that a largely rural part of North East England, County Durham, has the highest percentage of uninsured drivers – according to new research by Cuuver. The figures show that, in relation to its population, Durham has the highest number of fines and convictions for people driving without car insurance in England.

After sending out Freedom of Information requests to police forces throughout the country, the insurance comparison website, Cuuver, discovered that there have been over 118,000 recorded incidents of uninsured drivers on roads across England over the past four years.

Despite a population of just 48,069 people, Durham saw a total of 1,087 recorded incidents of people driving without car insurance between 2013 and 2016. This averages out at 0.57% of the population.

In contrast, Manchester’s population of 2.7 million only had 1,810 recorded incidents in the same time period. This makes Manchester the lowest city in England for uninsured drivers, with just 0.02% of residents being fined or prosecuted.

The police region with the highest number of reported incidents was Greater London. Between 2013 and 2016, a total of 70,354 incidents of driving without insurance were recorded. However, this only works out at 0.21% of the population.

Greater London Police also told Cuuver that the highest recorded speed in their region was 155-mph in a 50-mph zone.

Find out the top-ten worst offending areas in England for uninsured drivers by visiting Cuuver’s official research page, where graphs and further statistics can be found.

The study is a sharp contrast to research by Churchill in 2016, which found that London had the highest rate of uninsured drivers compared to vehicles registered, with Liverpool, Manchester and Bradford close behind.

In December 2017 the Mirror newspaper published the result of its own FOI request which showed that London was the hotspot for uninsured drivers in the UK, with Bradford a close second, then Sunderland in third place. According to DVLA data in 2017 there were around 207,000 convictions for driving without valid insurance, with men aged 25-28 being the most likely offenders.

The conflicting findings highlight the differences in comparing the percentage of uninsured drivers to population, vehicles registered with the DVLA, or UK licence holders.